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Category Archives: windows

Things I learned when re-learning ASP.NET

ASP.NET has changed dramatically in the past five years. I’ve had the privilege to work on some projects using the newer web stacks, as well as modernize an old project. I’d been away from the Microsoft ecosystem from around 2006 until 2011, and after working in dynamic languages (javascript, python, lisp), it took me some […]

Deploying .NET COM objects with MSBuild

At work I’ve been working with a very old classic ASP website, running on a very old hardware. After a few weeks of hacking vbscript, I’m sorely missing C#, and especially unit tests. I feel so exposed when there’s no tests proving my code does what I think it does. For reasons I’ll not go […]

working with R, postgresql + SSL, and MSSQL

I’ve been able to take a break from my regularly scheduled duties and spend some time working with R.  This is a short log of what I did to get it working. The main things I’m looking to do is regression modelling from a large dataset I have in postgresql and various stats calculations on […]

Installing VS 2008 and SQL 2008 Express on Windows 7

A new decade means time for a fresh windows install at work.  I ran into some trouble with windows 7, visual studio 2008, and SQL 2008 Express.  Here’s how I resolved them.  Contrary to most things I found on the web, I’m not using betas or release candidates. First off, installing SQL 2008 Express.  I […]

shibboleth attribute “scope () not accepted” and “value () could not be validated by policy, rejecting it”

I have a client who acts as a Shibboleth Service Provider (SP), and the corresponding Identity Provider (IdP) needed to update some of their information, so I had to spend a few hours debugging shibboleth again this morning. The punchline: in the metadata for an IdP, there are TWO places you need to specify the […]

SQL Server 2005 doesn’t like bitwise comparison of large numbers

An update trigger using COLUMNS_UPDATED() was failing, and I figured out the problem: Some simple SQL: SELECT CAST(0x0200 as bigint), 0x0200 | 0 SELECT CAST(0x02000 as bigint), 0x02000 | 0 SELECT CAST(0x020000 as bigint), 0x020000 | 0 SELECT CAST(0x0200000 as bigint), 0x0200000 | 0 SELECT CAST(0x02000000 as bigint), 0x02000000 | 0 SELECT CAST(0x020000000 as bigint), […]

Setting up a computer for Flash development

There are several tutorials out there on how to do this, but they all differed a little, and figured I might as well note mine.  I’m replicating the setup I have at work onto a home computer, so this is my second time around. Download and install Eclipse, the java version should be just fine […]

Migrate PuTTY saved sessions

PuTTY stores its session information in the registry, and there’s no function in PuTTY itself to import/export sessions. This makes moving to a new computer a little sticky. I did some googling and whittled down the documentation for storing configuration in a file into a few steps: On the old computer, open up a command […]

Server Application Unavailable, no event log, .NET 2

A perplexing error while setting up my new system: Server Application Unavailable The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the “Refresh” button in your web browser to retry your request. Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific request failure can be […]

Tightly coupled systems are unmaintainable

Yet another example of why I believe this: Microsoft told me to update to IE7, so I did. To test something in IE6, I’m installing MS Virtual PC 2004 (provided free by MS), and running an image of Windows XP that has IE6 (also provided free by MS). I am following this article from the […]